Bellevue, WA – Bellevue Arts Museum presents Eden Revisited: The Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser, a mid-career retrospective of a master potter and painter, on view through April 20, 2008.  The exhibition is comprised of approximately forty ceramic sculptures and several drawings that illustrate Weiser’s signature style that fuses the art of ceramics and china painting techniques.  Weiser’s porcelain vessels range from classically-inspired, yet amorphous lidded jars and teapots to unique mounted globes that are richly decorated with otherworldly imagery, and are full of allegorical and mythological references and lush landscapes.  
 
Weiser’s early works consist of abstract forms with minimal surface decoration, an approach in which he soon felt limited.  Around 1990, the artist began incorporating vibrant, fertile, tropical landscapes – perhaps stemming from his trips to Thailand – on the glazed surface of his vessels.  Surreal figures set within rich vegetation and wildlife emphasize a unique, mystifying interaction with nature.  “I gave up trying to control nature and decided to use what I had learned about the materials to express some ideas about nature itself and my place in it” states Weiser.  His mastery of the china painting technique – an overglazing process that requires multiple firings and careful attention to color placement and order – allows each vessel to portray an enveloping, multi-dimensional narrative.
 
Weiser received his B.F.A. (1972) at the Kansas City Art Institute under the guidance of ceramics master Ken Ferguson (1928-2004), the head of the ceramics department and one of the greatest American ceramics masters of the twentieth century.  After completing his M.F.A. at the University of Michigan in 1976, Weiser was appointed Resident Director of the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Montana.  The artist now maintains a studio in Tempe, Arizona where he is a Regents Professor at Arizona State University.
 
Kurt Weiser’s work is featured in public and private collections around the world that include: The Mint Museum of Craft + Design, North Carolina; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Museum of Contemporary Ceramics, Shiragaki, Japan; Helsinki Museum of Applied Arts, Finland; and the National Museum of History, Taipei, among others.
 
Eden Revisited: The Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser is organized by the Arizona State University Art Museum Ceramics Research Center, Tempe, Arizona, and curated by Curator of Ceramics Peter Held.

Bellevue Arts Museum

Bellevue Arts Museum is the Pacific Northwest's center for the exploration of the fine art of craft and design.  An emphasis is placed on regional craft artists as part of the national and international conversation of fine craft and design.